Thoughts on losing to weaker players and losing in general

Classic Fighting Games SSF2T: HD Remix
1

It happens to the best of us. No matter how good you get you will still lose to someone weaker then you occasionally, for w/e reason.

We are human, and there can be a plethora of reasons for this. Maybe you were tired, maybe your body is just low on fuel and you aren’t thinking clearly, maybe it was just a really bad match-up, maybe it was a match-up that you don’t know and it caught you off guard. The reasons are numerous.

What I want to know from my fellow SRKers, is how do you take these losses?

Do you get angry? Do you blow it off?

Personally, I try to learn from all my losses and move on from there. Currently on PSN I am ranked 1932 with a W:L record of 1840:504. And yeah quite a few of them are to weaker players, that managed to exploit a hole in my game or exposed me to something that I hadn’t really thought of before or had some weird strat.

When I take a look at those losses, I’m filled with pride. Because each of those losses taught me valuable lessons that made me a stronger player. And more then anything that’s what I want to be. A strong player who just keeps getting stronger. Those losses forced me speed up my reaction time, understand all my characters hitboxes, get my zoning down right, tighten up my execution, and work on my combos.

And yeah, some of those losses are due to things like lag and dumb glitches and…Akuma sigh:sad: Still I take it all in stride. And for most of those losses, I had to do some serious introspection after wards to understand my game and take it to the next level.

Another thing I always consider whenever I lose is that no matter what the reason is for your loss, isn’t the end result going to be the same? You have two choices really. Become strong or stay weak. So no matter what excuses you make in the end the choices are the same. And I chose the former.

So SRK, what are your thoughts? How do you take losing? What’s your philosophy on improving?

2

I admit, I lost a couple games to some noobie Ken players with just roundhouse sweeps against my Cammy. At first I was like WTF? It made me look up the frame data on Ken’s sweep vs Cammy’s c.mk made me realize that Shoto’s roundhouse sweeps has same frame rate as Cammy’s super fast c.mk on start up. So when we traded hits, I was on the losing end. It taught me a lesson not to under estimate Shoto’s sweeps. Sometimes playing random noobs, you may end up learning something new.

3

It’s interesting: both winning and losing are like a drug.
When you lose, you want to get back at the guy and sometimes you won’t stop until you win a couple, often at the detriment of your health!

When you win, you want to win more and more and more, until the other guy gives up.

As for losing to players perceived to be less skillful, I think you have to take it in stride. Yeah, you can be pissed for a little bit, but if it helps, say to yourself, I made the mistakes, so I need to make myself better. If the guy was better than you, well, he was better, but we know that can’t be true!

Remember: everyone loses, even Daigo.

4

To be honest, I really don’t care about winning or losing. To me this is all practice for when I go to my local tournaments where money is at stake. I rarely take any online play serious, though I do get upset or fustrated. Not with how my opponent beats me, but with myself for not being able to defeat them. I also get upset with rage quitters too. That alone probably pisses me off the most. It’s really no reason for it, even in a rank match. There is nothing at stake from online gaming for someone to throw a fit because they loss or are losing to me and disconnect. It’s a real bad sign of sportsmanship and is the hallmark of a scrub. My philosophy in STHD is that everyone should take it as a learning experience for when it really matters and not care so much about wins and losses.

5

Well for me, losing is usually attributed to two things. Either I was too careless, or I just simply wasn’t good enough.

I would say lag, but the connection on HDR has been quite friendly to me lately so I don’t see that as a viable factor to pin my losses on, even if it does contribute to my defeats from time to time.

6

I remember one day I was in a friendly match against this guy who used Boxer. And I swear to you that he had about 50 wins against my Ryu and I had only about 3 or 4 wins against his Boxer. It was ridiculous but I didn’t quit. Every other character he chose I beat but his Boxer was just ripping me a new one. You can damn well assume that it was frustrating because it sure as hell was…but when I lose…I believe there’s no one else to blame but myself. That’s one of the reasons I refrain from sending “hate mail”. But we all have our “off” days right?

7

I know what you mean when you say lose to a weaker player. When someone is obviously not thinking out their moves and wins in a way that seems shoddy or lucky, then it is feels right to say “I lost but I am still stronger.” But I don’t think thats the correct attitude.

I think of it like a rock paper scissors game with you being rock, the high level comp being scissors, and the “weaker player” being paper. Just because you (rock) can beat scissors, and scissors can beat paper, doesn’t mean you are stronger than paper.

Even though you can beat the whole world, and the whole world can beat him, if you can’t beat him, its tough to really say you are stronger. If they can expose a weakness in your game (maybe one you didn’t know was there) and take adavantage of it, then in the match between the two of you, they are the stronger player. Maybe not overall, but in your matches, yes. Until you learn to beat them.

It’s a really shitty way to think about it, because you have to admit people who aren’t as good as you overall are technically better than you to a degree, but until you beat them, you can’t say you are better.

8

I don’t take things seriously right now, as I don’t have my custom stick yet. After I get the stick, it’ll take time to get adjusted to it. I haven’t played any fighting games for over 10 years. I have a lot to learn again, especially because I hardly ever played Super Turbo and I’ll have a lot to learn when SFIV comes out.

I don’t mind losing that much right now. There’s only one player that really rankled me, I think it’s because he played a lot like me though not quite as effective and I lost because of the pad. I feel if I had my stick and had time to get confortable with it, that I would have beat him without much of a problem.

Since SFIV will be out, I know I’ll have quite a bit of catching up to some people who’ve been fortunate enough to play. I plan on making that my primary game and don’t feel I’ll hardly ever lose to weaker players once I get accustomed to it. If I do, I’ll file away what I learn and add it to my arsenal.

9

The fight is everything …

10

Any time you lose to a player that you are better than, you were doing some stupid/risky stuff. Maybe you jumped when you shouldn’t have, maybe you became predictable with your fireballs, maybe you tried to walk up throw from half screen away too many times, or maybe you tried to psychic DP them too many times, who knows.

I mean, when you are playing somebody that you know is pretty new/scrubby/whatever, you get kind of complacent, which is a weakness, and that weakness, no matter how small, can be exploited. Getting hit in ST hurts, it doesn’t take too many mistakes to lose a round. Lesson learned, if you don’t want to lose to people you should be beating, never, ever, get complacent.

Now losing to a better player(or one of equal skill level, if both of you are decent to good), that is a beautiful thing. Anytime I lose, I always ask myself why. What was wrong with my game plan? Did I actually follow my game plan, or did I get all free style with it? Was I being predictable? To quote my homie shoultzula, “I only lost today”.

11

It’s easy:
If you have a pad -> blame the pad
If you play online (like from Europe) -> blame lag
People who use the pad online NEVER lose.

Generally it’s easy to see that when you lose your execution and/or strategy was poor, or that you simply lost the mindgames a few times too many. If it comes down to mindgames, it’s statistically possible to always mistake, heavily favoring an opponent who is actually a lot less skilled. Then again, if you constantly end up in those games, he cant be that bad. When playing ranked this a win means nothing because of this, when playing 10+ games in the same match-up, it gets mathematically a lot more fair. I am often able to adapt to my opponent in a few games, just as it happens to me. Guess to prove the best player, you need a lot of games in ST.

12

i beat them down badly afterwards so they’ll never fuck with you again.

i usually start off my secondary characters first and if they managed to get thru them, then i bring out my best.

13

When I lose, I kind of sit back and say, “Damn.” I see what I did wrong and try to work at it. I try to learn as I go. In respects to weaker players, I try to see what moves they rely on (i.e. consistently rely on wake-up DPs, etc.) and adapt to them the next round/match.

Every match for me, is a learning experience.

14

I guess I’m the few minority here ( if they are even any here ) that play on a PS3 pad. Many times I feel I lose to obviously inferior players not only because of stuff like just fooling around or not focusing and doing predictable stuff, but to another reason no one has mentioned. My thumbs lacking of dexterity and endurance at times.

Some days I notice when my hands are cold or my thumb joint is tired, it immediately effects my ability to pull off DPs on the left side and specials for some reason ( especially reversal DPs! ). After about 50 matches with Ryu, I also notice my hadouken execution drops from 100% to like 80%…its pretty ridiculous…still though, I’m stuck on a pad for life :frowning:

15

I find that I don’t take online play as seriously either, for the reason that Shin Akuma stated: it’s all practice for the real deal, with money on the line. Sometimes I’ll even do silly things in a match just to test certain moves of strats in match-ups i don’t know too well, even though I accumulate a reasonable amount of losses from that.

16

I’ve played something like 200+ matches in Ranking mode over the last 3 or 4 days and yes, it can be somewhat frustrating to lose to someone that clearly isn’t very good or doesn’t really know what he’s doing. There’s only so many Ryu/Ken/Akuma fights you can go through before you start trying out random things simply because you automatically assume the next shoto is just as lame as the last one is… and every once in a while, they’re not.

I lost maybe 20-25 of those 200 matches.

Even the best players lose. What separates the best from the rest is that they learn from their mistakes. They don’t throw their controllers and give up when they come across some new strategy they’ve never beaten before.

17

Who the hell is making excuses?

This is just a thread where we as players can talk about our experiences through losing matches.

That’s all.

No one is saying they are consistently getting their asses handed to them by noobs. Hell I don’t even think I used that term. A weaker player could very well mean someone that you are only little bit better then. It’s just a generic term I used.

18

I get super angry and I take it out on the next five guys.

As an aside, my PSN rank has been slowly eroding over the past weeks. It went from around 450 to 650. I think it’s all the zero rated people running around who shouldn’t be zero rated.

19

I know what you meant when you made this topic, and so I am not saying you are making excuses. I know exactly what its like to lose to someone who just happened to throw out that random shoryuken and get that dizzy fireball.

I think the general problem is with the term “Losing to weaker players.” Who wins the game decides who is stronger. To say your opponent was weaker than you is trying to take the win even though you lost. It is like making excuses. No matter the reason, all things are equal going into a game, so the player who won is stronger, even if just for that match.

20

I don’t play to win, I don’t play to lose. I play to learn.

And when someone beats me while I’m in the casual rooms playing one of my garbage characters, and when that person goes on to beat one of the characters I’m actually decent with, I get super-excited because that means I can finally bring out my real characters, and there’s something to learn.

Happened to me the other day. My record in that room as soon as the person arrived was loss, loss, win, win, and win. And that’s why.